The wish to be contrary to the Taliban's belief

In fact, no complete decision has yet been reached on the formula for what kind of role Türkiye will play in Afghanistan. This decision will of course be determined through talks with the USA, which has decided to withdraw from Afghanistan, but it is also as clear as day that the USA is not the sole decision-maker or determinant in this matter. It is also clear that there will be other factors and actors that are decisive both in the decision that emerges and in the presence of a Turkish footprint there. Among these actors will be Pakistan, as well as all the parties representing the people of Afghanistan, and therefore the Taliban.

Everyone has accepted that the Taliban is the most important reality of today's Afghanistan, including, of course, first of all the USA, which has understood that it cannot win the 20-year war it waged against it. That is why, when the USA decided to withdraw, it conducted long negotiations with the Taliban.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan conveyed this political landscape in the clearest way possible at the airport before setting out on his trip to Northern Cyprus. Pointing to the fact that the Taliban has never clashed with Türkiye up to now, he stated that Türkiye too would not shy away from talking with it.

In saying these things he also added that they have no problem with the Taliban's beliefs. The reactions that came from many segments in Türkiye upon these words presented an instructive scene about how people see and define their own worlds of belief and identity. That some people hurry to separate themselves from the Taliban's religion and belief, and the othering they display toward the Taliban or other people in that hurry, and the ignorance they display in doing so, is in fact not very surprising. Because those who take a stance on this are always the same types.

From Erdoğan's statement that the Taliban's beliefs are not at odds with ours, it can of course not be concluded that he adopts the politics they follow or perhaps the juristic rulings and practices they base on this belief. In the end the Taliban's practices may perhaps refer to their own beliefs, but there is no such thing as this belief yielding only this interpretation and conclusion.

Indeed, those who hear for the first time that the Taliban too is Hanafi and Maturidi in fiqh and creed are probably experiencing a surprise at this point. I remember very well what a surprise a retired ambassador experienced when I once reminded him, he who emphasized the Hanafism and Maturidism of Turkish Islam in order to separate himself especially from the extremes of the Taliban and the Salafi creed, and who stressed that these beliefs instill positive values with regard to tolerance, multiculturalism, will and action, that the Taliban is also both Hanafi and Maturidi.

That gentleman probably thought that Maturidism and Hanafism manifest themselves in the same way everywhere, independent of sociological and historical conditions. Yet sociology teaches these possibilities by drawing attention to different factors, visible or invisible, in social change and events.

In essence, even though the practices that make the Taliban stand out take their references from its religious epistemology, what leads to those references with those interpretations cannot be thought apart from the historical events they have lived through. In the end, a movement that is uncompromisingly devoted to the independence of an occupied country and has adopted a line of struggle suited to the Afghan temperament has put forward an entirely different example of Maturidism and Hanafism. The belief is the same but the practice has emerged differently, and moreover in this difference we have no privilege whatsoever that in every case would make us come out right or superior to the Taliban. Who can so easily know and judge what anyone has lived through? Especially when an occupation and a people's resistance displayed against that occupation are in question.

Some attribute Salafism to the Taliban's understanding, knowingly or not, and link its rigidity to Salafism or Wahhabism through the support it received from Saudi Arabia.

We have to say that this is an attribution made entirely with rote clichés. The Taliban is neither Salafi nor anywhere near Saudi support. On the contrary, the Taliban's understanding of religion is one that even judges Salafism, one that is miles away from it, and it has not the slightest sympathy for Saudi Arabia or Wahhabism.

With the extremely strong organized structure of its traditional madrasa teachers and students, built on religious understanding, respect and loyalty, it is not at all foreign to the sociological structure that exists in Afghanistan. On the contrary, with the offer of authority and order it presented to the environment of irresolution and chaos left by alternative political actors, it succeeded in a short time in gaining the approval of the great majority of the people. That is, it is not a structure that came from outside or has its roots abroad; on the contrary, it is ultimately a phenomenon that emerged from the very body of the Afghan people.

Erdoğan's saying that we are not at odds with the Taliban's belief must be understood in this context, and it is a very fitting statement. Of course we will have some dialogues in some of our politics within the framework of mutual understanding.

Moreover, some, unable to restrain themselves, have lowered the Taliban to the level of a terrorist organization. The truth is that the Taliban was a government that had ruled the country for 7 years at the time of the US occupation. With the occupation it went into resistance, and in the meantime it carried out no armed action anywhere outside Afghanistan. It set as its mission only to liberate its own country from occupation, and it is seen that it has been successful in this. Even the USA, which called it terrorist because it fought it, sat down at the table with it, recognized it, and made clear that from now on it will be in contact with it as a party.

On what justified and reasonable ground, then, could Türkiye treat the Taliban as terrorist?

Of course Türkiye will be in Afghanistan with its own mission and not in spite of the Afghan people but with their consent and mutual understanding. There is not even any deviation from this line in question.